Inspired by an Arctic assignment for National Geographic, photographer James Balog chronicled disappearing glaciers through a three-year, three-million-dollar project called the Extreme Ice Survey that resulted in the new film Chasing Ice. He spoke to Pop Omnivore about the surprising drama and otherworldly beauty of glaciers—and about confronting the reality of climate change.

How do you bring the Dust Bowl back to life? Get Ken Burns to make a film about it. The preeminent documentarian’s latest act, The Dust Bowl, airing November 18 and 19 at 8 p.m. on PBS, is a two-part, four-hour look at “a decade-long natural catastrophe of biblical proportions.” In the 1930s, America’s agricultural…

Can you imagine spending your life encased in 750 pounds of iron? The new film The Sessions is based on the true story of Mark O’Brien, a poet who was largely confined to an iron lung. Learn more about the history of iron lungs…

As a magazine of geography, we were interested in finding out about Gangnam: Where (and what) is it? Gangnam means “south of the river” in Korean. It’s a ritzy district that lies just below the Han river in South Korea’s capital, Seoul. To gain more insights into Gangam style, we spoke with a few former residents of Seoul.

By Catherine Zuckerman Frog: It’s what’s for dinner. Frog fallopian tubes, to be exact. On a recent episode of The Amazing Race, contestants jetted off to Shanghai and had to down a Chinese delicacy known as hasma. Described as “frog fallopian tubes,” the meal looked daunting—picture a mound of small, milky-white, jiggling blobs. To kick…

This year, Paul Simon released a 25th anniversary album edition of Graceland in a boxed set. In honor of this special occasion, we spoke with Paul Simon about what has changed in the quarter of a century since he first set foot Under those African Skies…

If you’re in the DC area, stop by National Geographic headquarters this weekend for a cultural treat: The All Roads Film Festival (Sept. 27-30), featuring compelling stories from indigenous and minority cultures. The films take viewers around the world, from the rural Philippines and Tibet to South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Inspired by the movie The Amazing Spider-Man, Pop Omnivore wondered: What can a real spider bite do to a real human being? To find out, we asked Dana DeRoche, an arachnid specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, which spider species have the worst—and weirdest—bite.

Pop phenom Rihanna took to Twitter on June 23 to share her new ink: a tattoo of an Egyptian Falcon perched on her right ankle. “Falcon: a light that shines in the darkness! Never close their eyes during sleep,” Rihanna tweeted. Which begs the question: Do falcons really sleep with their eyes open?

The movie For Greater Glory depicts a war that many Americans have never heard of: Mexico’s Cristero War of 1926–1929, aka La Cristiada. The war began when president Plutarco Elias Calles started enforcing anti-religious sections of the country’s constitution. For NGM intern Antonia Rico, the war is familiar…

In the new movie 21 Jump Street, two young cops are sent back to high school as undercover police officers. The pair are shocked to find that in the few years they’ve been away, the social strata have been seismically restructured: Biking to school, recycling and otherwise showing concern for the environment makes you a Cool Kid. To find out whether this depiction of the new cool is accurate, Pop Omnivore spoke with National Geographic Emerging Explorer Juan Martinez.

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